[mitthrowaway2]

In my opinion, this is the reason:

> Still, these disaster-monster films do need people at the end of the day. A movie with only dinosaurs is just a kids’ film and the dinosaurs are talking to each other.

If it's not a kid's movie with talking dinosaurs, then it has to either be a time travel movie where humans go back to the dinosaur era, or else a movie where dinosaurs are resurrected in the modern era like Jurassic Park. And Jurassic Park is iconic enough that nobody can really use that premise again.

[windward]

Non-verbal creatures don't make very good antagonists on their own. Jurassic Park's premise makes it a story about human folly, but the time travel setup would make them a distraction from a moral quandary that we're already very accustomed to.

On the other hand, zombie movies get a lot of this for free. Hell is full, there is no rest, humans are the real bastards.

[mitthrowaway2]

That's a good point. But as they say, the three genres of literary conflict are "man vs man", "man vs nature", and "man vs himself". There are many good films that don't have a human antagonist, such as Cast Away, and there's no reason Wilson couldn't be a dinosaur. =)

[interloxia]

The series Terra Nova (2011) tried the back in time approach.